Zulema Robinson
Director of ITS Projects
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
2 Broadway
New York, NY 10004

Dear Ms. Robinson,

On behalf of the below organizations, we are writing to urge you to protect the nearly 300 current E-ZPass call center jobs that are located on Staten Island.

We have learned that the contract to provide E-ZPass customer service support is up for bid as part of MTA solicitation #PSC-15-2982X.

For the past decade, the call center workers, now employed by Conduent, have staffed the E-ZPass call center here on Staten Island.  The vast majority of the workers live on the island and the vast majority are people of color.  These jobs provide improved wages and solid benefits that allow these workers the opportunity for upward mobility and maintain economic stability.  

Since 2012, the workers have been represented by CWA Local 1102, which has negotiated improved pay and benefits as well as a measure of job security and a grievance procedure which ensures fair treatment on the job.  These are good jobs and Staten Island cannot afford to lose them.

As New York and the rest of the country continue to face severe economic devastation from the COVID-19 crisis, the importance of good-paying, stable jobs with benefits has never been more critical. For the sake of our community and for the sake of these workers, we urge you to protect the current workforce from large scale displacement.

We urge that you stop the contracting process until you can give the community assurances that the contract awardee will retain the current E-ZPass customer service workforce in their current localities and that these jobs will stay good, family-supporting jobs. Similar protections were included in the R-211 train contract authorized by the MTA and in other contracts in New York City, and must be included in any new E-ZPass customer service contract.  

Our request for a halt until workforce retention guarantees are in place is all the more imperative given the pandemic and record unemployment, which has hit Black and Hispanic workers particularly hard.

We thank you for your attention to this urgent and important matter.

Sincerely,